


Sirius Black and the Case of the Missing Dirigible Plums

by starfishstar



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, Marauders, Seventh year, bizarre borrowing of plot elements from a Dorothy L. Sayers story, but you don't have to be familiar with that to read this, light-hearted mystery romp
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-03
Updated: 2015-11-03
Packaged: 2018-04-29 19:09:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,474
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5139266
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starfishstar/pseuds/starfishstar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There’s a mystery afoot in Gryffindor Tower, and Sirius is going to get to the bottom of it: Who stole the dirigible plums?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sirius Black and the Case of the Missing Dirigible Plums

**Author's Note:**

  * For [shimotsuki](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shimotsuki/gifts).



> Happy birthday, [shimotsuki](http://archiveofourown.org/users/shimotsuki/pseuds/shimotsuki)! This fic is for you, who share a very special birthday with one Sirius Black. As I pondered “What Can I Write About That’s Sirius-Centric And Shimotsuki Will Enjoy?” I thought of your love of mystery stories, and our shared appreciation of Dorothy L. Sayers’ books. And I had a very silly idea.
> 
> Characters belong to J.K. Rowling; plot elements shamelessly and zanily lifted from “Talboys” by Dorothy L. Sayers. (Forgive me for leaving out the snake and the child-rearing debates...but you’ll find most of the rest intact!)

 

“James!” Sirius cried, his voice tragic. “Somebody’s stolen the dirigible plums!”

James Potter groaned and rolled to a sitting position by the shore of the Hogwarts lake. The springtime sun was so very warm, and Lily’s fingers threading through his hair were so very deft. Dirigible plums could truly be said to be the furthest thing from James’ mind, ranking in order of importance somewhere down around the N.E.W.T.s for which he ought to be studying.

Sirius skidded to a stop on the grass in front of James and Lily, and gazed down at them with a highly affronted look. “What, no cry of dismay? No swearing of a solemn oath to apprehend at any cost the villainous culprit who has absconded with the dirigible plums?”

James snorted, a sound halfway between affection and utter irritation. “Sirius, if this is seriously just about a box of dirigible plums…”

Sirius crossed his arms and glared. “ _Seriously_ , Quigley Puffett had very important plans for those plums, for that Herbology competition Sprout’s putting on next week. Dirigible plums have a number of fascinating magicobotanical properties that make them worthy of study, I’ll have you know, and their disappearance is a great loss for science.”

Lily snorted, looking up at Sirius from her comfortable spot on the grass next to James with a raised eyebrow. “And this concerns you because…?”

Quite suddenly and quite completely, Sirius went shifty-eyed. “No reason.”

“Oi!” came a voice from further up the lawn, where a figure in robes too warm for the weather and a scarf in Gryffindor colours was making its rapid way towards the lake.

Lily’s smirk widened. “By any chance, has the fact that an angry Quigley is barrelling at you right now got anything to do with it?”

“Listen, I didn’t do it!” Sirius said, very fast. “He thinks I took them because I filched _one_ yesterday, okay, just one, because I was curious if they really are hallucinogenic if you eat them straight.” James raised an interested eyebrow. Lily elbowed James in the side. “They’re not, if you’re wondering,” Sirius added. “But now Puffett’s got it in his head that if they’ve disappeared, it must’ve been me. But it wasn’t, and I’m going to clear my name, whether or not you lot help me. Besides, there’s a _mystery_ afoot! Don’t you want to solve it?”

“Yes,” James murmured. “The case of the missing dirigible plums. A riddle for the ages.”

“Black!” Quigley cried, reaching them by the shore of the lake, puffing from the exertion of his run. “What’ve you done with my dirigible plums?”

Sirius spun, and fixed Quigley with a haughty look. “Haven’t touched them.”

Quigley’s jaw dropped in disbelief. “I _saw_ you take one yesterday. Are you seriously going to deny it?”

“Yes, yes,” Sirius said impatiently, “I took _one_. What would I want with the rest of your stupid plums, once I already had one?”

Quigley blinked at him, stunned to think Sirius seemed to consider this an adequate defence, but at the same time at a loss as to how to counter it. Then he gathered his wits about him and glared at Sirius. “Then how come, when I did a _Revelio_ spell to see who had last touched the box, your name was the only one the spell brought up? _And,_ by the way, Mary Macdonald saw you sneaking out through the common room early this morning, so don’t pretend you weren’t there.”

Sirius’ face took on a slow smile. “Oh, that. Don’t worry, I’ve got an alibi for where I went last night.”

Lily rolled her eyes. “Actually, please _don’t_ tell us the name of your alibi.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it! I’m a gentleman,” Sirius proclaimed. Lily rolled her eyes again, hard enough to hurt.

“And the _Revelio_ spell? The fact that you were the last one to touch that box?” Quigley demanded, not to be side-tracked by rumours of Sirius’ amorous exploits.

“Well, I did touch the box, didn’t I? Yesterday. So obviously whoever’s taken the plums came along after me and opened the box again, but without touching it.”

There was a moment of thoughtful silence, then Lily said, “Actually…”

“It is kind of a fun little mystery, isn’t it?” James agreed. He jumped up and offered a hand to Lily, who leapt to her feet beside him.

“Don’t worry, Puffett,” James said. “Your investigators are on the case. Lily, Sirius? Shall we view the evidence?”

 

* * *

 

Quigley Puffett had been quite proud of his box of dirigible plums, when they’d arrived in the breakfast-time post in a box borne by four strong owls.

Quigley was a good-natured Gryffindor sixth-year with a round face and a keen interest in plants; his mother was a gardener and had happily sent her son the whole crop of dirigible plums from the family’s kitchen garden, when he’d expressed an interest in making a study of them as his contribution to the Herbology competition Professor Sprout was organising amongst her sixth-year students.

Now, Sirius, James and Lily stood around a small table in the Gryffindor common room, peering at the decidedly empty box that sat upon it. Where yesterday the little wooden chest had been full to the brim with carrot-coloured floating plums, now just one plum remained forlornly in one of the lower corners, its stem caught in the small gap between the imperfectly fitted side and base of the box. The lone, levitating plum strained upwards against its caught stem, as if longing to rejoin its fellows. 

“Huh,” James said. He poked gently at the plum, which bobbed obligingly against his finger. Lily, meanwhile, crouched down to examine the outside of the box. “Wonder why they left this one and took the rest,” James mused.

“Ha, so you do believe me,” Sirius said, peering in over James’ shoulder, his chin poking James in the ear.

James shrugged him off. “What do you mean?”

Sirius snaked an arm past James and gently worked the lone plum free of the crack where its stem was caught. He closed his hand around the plum so it couldn’t float away and lifted it out of the box. “You said ‘they’, referring to whoever took the plums, meaning you don’t think I’m the one who did it, because I am a singular ‘he’ rather than a plural ‘they.’”

Lily’s face popped up on the other side of the box, grinning. “Well done, Black! Didn’t know you could count that high.”

Sirius stuck out his tongue at her, which did nothing to raise the general level of discourse.

James gave them each a deploring look in turn, then snapped the lid of the box shut. “Yes, I believe you, you dolt. Even you wouldn’t go to this much effort for the sake of a prank as pointless as taking a bunch of somebody’s fruit and then not even doing anything with it.” 

Sirius beamed, the remaining plum he’d retrieved from the box still cupped in one hand. “Thank you!” Then he frowned. “I think.”

“Right, _so_ ,” Lily said, standing up and dusting her palms against her robes. “Plan? Line of investigation? Somebody took Puffett’s plums, and they didn’t touch the box when they did it, and that’s all we know. Well, and also, nobody saw them in the common room. Don’t know if that’s any help to us.”

“Nobody saw them in the common room,” Sirius breathed. “Oh, Lily, you’re brilliant.”

“Am I?” Lily asked, amused.

“Only rarely,” Sirius amended. This time, it was Lily who stuck out her tongue at him, and Sirius smirked back at her. Then, still clutching the plum he’d recovered from the box, he dashed to the nearest window.

Sirius examined the windowsill, then opened the window, craning his neck out and peering at the window frame, below and to both sides. He rested a thoughtful finger against the stones that formed the outside of the tower. “Oh, _yeah_ ,” he said. “Very clever, very good. Except, of course, that we’re cleverer.”

“Are we?” It was James who asked, this time.

“Yes,” Sirius said. “We are. Come on!”

 

* * *

 

There is one drawback about having a best mate with whom you share a nearly telepathic connection and a preternatural talent for finding mischief, and that is that on the rare occasions when you don’t understand what he’s talking about, you’re left completely at sea.

James scrambled after Sirius, Lily at his side, as the three of them dashed down all the flights of stairs from Gryffindor Tower, then pelted across the lawns in the direction of the Quidditch pitch. Sirius skewed to a stop in front of the shed that housed the sport equipment, yanked open the door and ducked in side. James and Lily followed.

“Here, hold this,” Sirius said, pressing the dirigible plum he still held into James’ hand. James closed his fingers automatically around the fruit as it bobbed against his palm, forever drawn to float skywards like all of its kind. Sirius was already digging through the piles of unused equipment in the room, tossing aside protective gear, mounds of demobilised Quaffles and even an unused Quidditch hoop.

James glanced at Lily. Lily glanced at James.

 _Has he lost his mind?_ James mouthed.

 _Your guess is as good as mine_ , Lily mouthed back. 

“Aha!” Sirius cried. He emerged from the pile, looking dustier for the wear, clutching a wide mesh net on a long pole.

“Yes,” James said. “Well done, you’ve found…a net?”

Sirius leaned closer to the open doorway, so the sunlight from outside caught on the net. “Hm…” he said. “Maybe…yes!” With a triumphant flourish, he pointed one finger at something caught in the mesh. Something small and green, something very much like…

“A leaf from a dirigible plum,” Lily said, standing with her hands on her hips, looking impressed despite herself at this evidence that Sirius’ leap of logic had been a sound one. “Okay, seriously though, how did you know to look here?”

“ _Seriously_ ,” Sirius said, sounding inordinately pleased with himself and lifting the net a little higher into the sunlight, “no one saw whoever stole the plums go in or out of the common room, ergo, maybe they were never in the common room at all. It would be easy to take a broom out at night and fly up the tower, easy to hover outside the window and open the box by casting an _Alohomora_ at it, but what then? Dirigible plums float, so the moment the box opened they’d be drifting all over the place. Ergo, to collect them despite not being in the same room with them, you’d have to have a net or something to catch them the moment they started floating up out of the box. _And_ what I know that you don’t know is that there’s some weird game you can play on brooms with these nets, and it’s all the rage with the sixth-years right now. My, er, alibi whom I am not to name was telling me about it. And these are the same sixth-years who are going batty over Sprout’s Herbology competition they all want to win, so whoever stole Puffett’s plums will be whoever’s most desperate to win the competition. Easy.”

“You guessed all that from looking at the window in the common room?” James asked, sceptical.

“Nope.” Sirius pressed the net gently into Lily’s hand – “Careful with that, that’s evidence” – and nabbed the one surviving dirigible plum back from James. “By looking at this. One plum left in the box, why leave that one behind? I certainly wouldn’t have left one behind, if my mission were to steal all of someone’s plums.”

“No, you bloody well wouldn’t have done,” muttered Lily, who’d found a fair number of her belongings nicked by one or another of the Marauders over the years.

“Too right,” Sirius grinned. “If you were standing there looking into the box, you’d have seen right away that you’d missed one. But if you _couldn’t_ see into the box, if you were outside the window doing it all by charmwork and just expecting all the plums to float out of the box because that’s what dirigible plums do, then you’d have missed this one and never known it.”

“Clever,” Lily admitted, tapping the evidence gently against her hand.

“Really?” Sirius asked with a pleased grin.

“Only rarely,” she said. She smirked at him, and he smirked back. James rolled his eyes at both of them, and led the way out of the equipment shed.

 

* * *

 

Quigley Puffett made his final appearance on the matter just before dinner, approaching James and Lily and Sirius where they were sprawled in the armchairs in the common room, engaging in a lazy game of Gobstones with Remus and Peter. 

“To think old Willmott Maggs and that best mate of his stole my plums because they were afraid my Herbology project would be better than their bubotubers!” Quigley exclaimed, throwing himself down on the sofa next to Sirius. “When I went to confront them in Ravenclaw Tower, they tried to pretend it was all just a joke. Joke? I’d like to hear what Professor Sprout would say about that! But I got my plums back, and there’s still plenty of time before the competition, so it’s all right.” 

“Good for you,” James said.

“I hope your project wins,” Lily added kindly.

“Thanks,” Quigley said with a shy smile at her. “They looked pretty ridiculous, too, with all my plums sitting right there, trying to pretend they didn’t know what I was talking about. But I described the whole thing like I’d seen it, how they hovered outside the window and opened the box from outside and caught all the plums in the net. They were right spooked, thinking maybe I’d been there and seen them do it!”

Sirius chuckled. “Good on you. They deserved it.”

“Anyway, thank you,” Quigley said. “I – er – I shouldn’t have blamed you, Black, without any evidence. That wasn’t very sporting of me.”

“Oh, don’t worry about it,” Sirius said, sounding embarrassed. “It’s no big deal.”

“Well, either way, I wanted to thank you,” Quigley said. “I have more plums than I need for my project, so I’d like to give you these, as a token of appreciation.”

Out of his school satchel, he pulled a little net bag that floated dreamily in his hand, small orange shapes bumping and jostling inside it. He pressed it into Sirius’ hand, so Sirius took it, though he looked sceptical as to what he was going to do with half a dozen dirigible plums.

“You know, not many people know this,” Quigley confided, lowering his voice, “but dirigible plums are actually mildly hallucinogenic, if you cook them first.”

Sirius looked at James. James looked at Sirius. “Oh, dear,” Lily said.

 

* * *

 

**The End**


End file.
